By Brad Barnes
If Patty Loveless were a revisionist, she could paint a pretty good country-western story.
She grew up in a Kentucky town called Butcher Hollow. She's not only cousin to Crystal Gale and Loretta Lynn, she's a coal miner's daughter. She married as a teen and divorced 10 years later. And she remembers as a child going 40 miles south to Elkhorn City, on the Virginia state line, as often as she could.
"There was a store where I would sneak over and take my lunch money and put it into the jukebox," Loveless said. "It was like, I'd rather hear music than eat, I enjoyed it so much."
But she's no revisionist, this woman.
And that's why, even as she's lived enough material for a boxed set of beer-swilling country songs, she's just as likely to tell you about how close she was to taking a database class to pursue a computer career, or how she sang covers of Joan Jett and Whitesnake - "Whitesnake, honestly" - just to be on stage.
The whole, complex package comes to Savannah on Saturday, at the front end of the Savannah Music Festival. Loveless, touring to promote her second disc of old-style mountain music, shares a comfortable billing with Kathy Mattea, whose own concerts often include traditional Celtic instruments.
The women share a career trajectory, too. Both scored chart-topping country hits in the late 1980s and now concentrate on music more personally important to them. For Mattea, it's the social activism on the 2008 record "Coal." For Loveless, it's the banjo- and fiddle-filled "Mountain Soul" albums, exploring the musical style of her earliest childhood memories.
They're both a long way from Taylor Swift country.
"Now that I hear country music today and a lot of these newer artists, I'm going, 'Man, I grew up with the George Joneses and the Merle Haggards, the Loretta Lynns and the Patsy Clines. I got the opportunity to sing with Vince Gill and Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw.' I feel like I'm a hundred years old," Loveless said.
At 52, her voice is clear and strong, as it carries its distinctive depth and warble.
"A wonderful voice, a wonderful person," said Juba Walsh, an Atlanta fan who was impressed with Loveless's passion for fighting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which took the life of the singer's older sister.
Walsh described Loveless as "real.''
"She cares about people and is warm and kind. That shows in her music."
One reviewer of "Mountain Soul II" said Loveless and producer/husband, Emory Gordy Jr., "make no concessions to contemporary country music and don't seem to give a damn about the charts." And that's actually made her some fans, including Savannah's George E. Newman.
"I wish some of these new country stars would learn a thing or two from her," said Newman, 62. "I wasn't a big fan of hers in the early years, but I'm a bluegrass picker, and I love her later records."
Still, having turned her back on pop country, does Loveless miss the superstardom of the days when she scored No. 1 hits like "Chains" and "Timber, I'm Falling in Love"?
Sure she does.
"It was always great, and it still is great, to hear one of your songs played on the radio," she said.
But aside from the stray Whitesnake cover, hopefully never to show up on YouTube, she's got few regrets.
"It's been a wonderful, true, great ride," Loveless said. "A wonderful journey."
IF YOU GO
What: Savannah Music Festival concert with Patty Loveless and Kathy Mattea
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Lucas Theatre for the Arts, 32 Abercorn St. , Savannah
Tickets: Sold out*
Information and tickets: Call 912-525-5050 or go to savannahmusicfestival.org.
* Tickets may become available at the door.
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Savannah Now.
